June 23, 2009

David Fox
Rivals.com College Basketball

» MORE: Underclassman Tracker: Who's staying, who's going

When Tyler Hansbrough is drafted Thursday night, fans might yawn. Maybe some scouts or executives will, too.

Picking a college senior, even one as accomplished as Hansbrough, has its drawbacks. After all, if he was considered a high pick, he would have left school early. And few NBA teams are led by four-year college players.

But while international players, high school seniors and one-and-dones have made the biggest waves in the draft over the past 15 years, college upperclassmen could be considered the glue that holds NBA teams together.

College seniors made up 39.1 percent of NBA rosters at the end of the 2008-09 season. There were 170 four-year players, more than double the amount of direct-from-high school draftees and one-and-dones combined (68) and more than double the amount of international players (52). In fact, college upperclassmen ? junior and seniors ? made up more than half of NBA rosters (57.9 percent).

Those statistics may come as a surprise, given the focus on high school freshmen, college freshmen and international players in NBA drafts over the past decade. The last college senior drafted first overall was Cincinnati forward Kenyon Martin in 2000. The next eight No. 1 picks: three high schoolers, two international players, one college sophomore and two college freshmen who almost certainly would have bypassed college altogether had the rules allowed.

"Over that process, the seniors got lost in the mix," Memphis Grizzlies director of scouting Tony Barone Jr. said. "The consistent guys are the four-year guys in college who come out of the fray."

Despite their number in the NBA as a whole, college veterans aren't necessarily underrepresented in the draft lottery or in the draft overall.

Portland and Indiana were the only NBA teams that had college seniors as their leading scorers (Brandon Roy and Danny Granger, respectively). The teams in the NBA Finals were led by players who did not play college basketball at all ? Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis. And the Lakers and Magic had a decorated college senior wearing street clothes (Adam Morrison) or playing sparingly (J.J. Redick) during the playoffs. Magic guard Jameer Nelson, an All-Star who missed much of the season with injury, was the most accomplished college player to have a major role on either team.

Even so, five of the 16 playoff teams were led in scoring by a player who stayed through at least his junior year of college. Three were led by a high school senior, one by a college freshman and three by a college sophomore.

Of the 46 individual all-stars over the past five seasons ? players who played in multiple games were counted just once ? nine were college seniors. College freshmen and high school seniors accounted for 10 all-stars during the same time.

Just don't expect college seniors to follow in the footsteps of Duncan or Nash. Many may become solid starters or role players, but stardom might be too much too ask.

"Take someone like a [former Duke senior] Shane Battier," said Ryan Blake, assistant director of scouting for Marty Blake and Associates, a basketball scouting firm; Marty Blake is the director of scouting services for the NBA. "He was a very good player. Our estimation was that he's going to be a very good player, but he's not going to be a star. You take him at nine or 10 [in the first round], you get him cheap.

"Hansbrough might be the same way. He might not be your franchise player, but he might be a guy that's ready to come in and be ready to play."

California coach Mike Montgomery, who spent two years as coach of the Golden State Warriors, expects the numbers to skew younger and younger as players leave college after only a year or two.

"The only people left are the younger kids," he said. "All the better players [in the NBA] are one- or two-year guys. If you look at rosters 10 years from now, that's what you're going to see."

In Rivals.com's look at pro pipelines to the NBA we studied rosters as of the end of the 08-09 season. Among other nuggets we found:

The ACC led all conferences in putting players in the NBA, whether you considered current conference alignments (in that case, the ACC had 55) or alignments from when each player played his final college season (the ACC had 53).

Duke has the most alums in the NBA, at 14, followed by UCLA and Connecticut (12 each), North Carolina and Kansas (11 each) and Arizona (10). Memphis leads non-"Big Six" programs with six.

The power conferences still have a grip on sending players to the NBA. The ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC had 256 players on NBA rosters. The other leagues combined had 92 players. That 92 include players such as Marquette's Dwyane Wade, who played in Conference USA before his alma mater moved to the Big East.

Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Virginia Tech were the only programs from the six major conferences that did not have a player on an NBA roster.

The Big South, Ivy League and Northeast are the only Division I conferences without a player in the NBA.

Of the 343 Division I programs, 125 had a player in the NBA. There were three players from Division II (Ben Wallace of Virginia Union, Jeremy Richardson of Delta State and Ronald Murray of Shaw), two players from junior college (Jamario Moon and Chris Anderson) and one player from Division III (Devean George of Augsburg).

How much did conference realignment hurt Conference USA? Current C-USA teams have 12 players in the NBA with half of those coming from Memphis. If you count NBA players who actually played in C-USA while at Marquette, Louisville, DePaul, Cincinnati and USF, that number is 22.

Louisville had only one alum in the NBA, Francisco Garcia.

There are more players who came from overseas (52) than directly from high school (33) or who were one-and-dones (35).

Where do NBA players come from?
The following are the percentages of the amateur experience levels in the NBA. Players who came directly from high school or after one year of college are listed together because of the NBA's recent rule requiring players to be out of high school for at least one year. In this chart we examined: 1. The NBA rosters as of the end of the 2008-09 season 2. The last five years of lottery picks 3. The last five years of first-round draft picks 4. The last five all-star teams (counting individuals only once) 5. The rosters of the 2009 NBA semifinalsts (the Los Angeles Lakers, Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets and Cleveland Cavaliers).
	HS/Fr.	Soph.	Jr.	Sr.	Int'l
All NBA rosters	15.6	14.0	18.9	39.1	12.0
Lottery picks	32.4	23.9	25.4	15.5	11.3
First-round picks	22.7	15.3	23.3	22.0	16.7
All-stars	21.7	21.7	21.7	19.6	15.2
Semifinalists	16.4	18.2	16.4	25.5	21.8
(For example, 39.1 percent of NBA rosters stayed in college through their senior years, but only 22 percent of first-round picks and 15.5 percent of lottery picks over the past five years were college seniors. Conversely, 32.4 percent of lottery picks over the past five seasons either came directly from high school or left college after one year.)

» MORE: Underclassman Tracker: Who's staying, who's going

David Fox is a national writer for Rivals.com. He can be reached at dfox@rivals.com.